


the end is coming (rush over me)

by plinys



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-07
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-15 12:38:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9235571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: The problem was no one ever accounted for her survival.





	

The problem was no one ever accounted for her survival. 

If Jyn was being entirely honest, she hadn’t been either. Stealing the Death Star plans was a suicide mission. The type of mission that wouldn’t lead to her going down in fame, in ten years no one was supposed to remember her name. There would be some mention of it maybe - a crew that never survived - but got the plans out to the rebels just in time.

She had accepted that legacy. 

Accepted it the second she had the plans in hand and had seen Krennic there.

But she had lived beyond that moment.

Cassian had saved her then. 

And with what came after. 

The explosion of the light, the heat that burned through her entire body, the sure feeling that  _ this  _ was the end, only to find out that it wasn’t. 

 

She woke up. 

A miracle according to the medical droid that had been attending to her. 

If surviving a suicide mission had been a fluke, then waking up from her coma had been a  _ miracle _ . Every part of her ached, something that she was assured was a side effect of her coma, not of the explosion that put her there.

There was talk of something, of medical procedures, of bacta tanks, of too much for Jyn to even begin to process.  

It is with a dry unused throat that she finally manages to croak out the question that had been lingering in her mind since the second she had awoken to the blinding lights of a rebel medbay: “How long?”

She’s never been a fan of droids. 

The way they avoid the question. Stammer something about numbers, vague and unimportant. 

So she asks the second question, the one she should have asked first, the one that burns her throat to have to ask, to have to put into words, “Cassian? The others are they-”

At this the droid falls silent.

An answer in and of itself. 

 

Mon Mothma cuts a regal figure by her bedside. She does not belong here, in the medbay, she belongs in the center of the rebellion making the decisions that men will live and die by. 

The type of decisions that Jyn had attempted to die by.

“Can’t even die right,” Jyn says, self deprecating, but honest. 

She watches Mon Mothma’s eyes, the way they flicker with something almost like pity for a brief moment, before turning back into the steel, back into the eyes of a leader. 

She tells Jyn in no uncertain terms that she was only survivor, a fact that Jyn knew but still had to hear. She is more brutal than the Em-Dee, describing Jyn’s injuries in a matter of fact tone. 

Burns that even a bacta tank couldn’t heal.

Nerve damage that they did the best to patch back together.

Scarring to the inside of her lungs. 

“That’s why it hurts to breathe,” she says, each word sets of a fire inside of her.

Burning. Burning.

She’s constantly burning. 

“You are lucky to have made it this far Miss Erso, do not forget that. The rebellion could still use your help in whatever capacity you can manage.” 

“Thanks,” she says, the  _ but no thanks  _ never quite making it out of her mouth. 

 

If she had survived whole and well she would have been a pathfinder.

Kes Dameron tells her as much. As he leans against the wall of her room - because she’s moved out of the medbay down and into a proper room of her own - asking her for tactical advice. 

He’s a good man. 

Friendly even though she is not, even though there’s no real reason to be friendly with her.

She’s not a pathfinder.

Or a pilot.

Or a diplomat.

Or even a scientist like her Imperial father had been. 

She’s a rebel.

Maybe somewhere at her core. 

Until she figures out what that means, why she’s still here, when there’s a whole galaxy out there waiting for her. She smiles at Kes in an all too knowing way, cutting off his ongoing description of the plans for a battle she’ll never be a part of to ask: “How are you and that pilot doing?” 

 

She wakes from a nightmare.

Her body burning.

World alight. 

She coughs, tries to expel the fire within her lung with no success, wheezing in bed, her sheets puddled around her body, until she remembers how to breathe. Remembers that she has survived that she is alive.

That she is alone. 

The floor of her room is icy beneath her feet, it grounds her, as she makes her way over to the only mirror in the room. It is not as though she has not looked in it before, but sometimes she needs the reminder. 

Jyn had never particularly found herself beautiful before. She was not vain in that way. She knew that she was plain, used it to her advantage to blend into the back of the crowd.

Never again will she be able to blend into the background.

There are burn scars on her face, pale pink in some sections, a burnt brown in others - where even the bacta tank couldn’t heal her fully. She presses her fingers into one of those sections, wishing that she could feel something, that there was some way of knowing that it really was her hand on her cheek, not the hand of a stranger. 

 

Leaving Yavin 4 is almost too easy. There’s some sort of celebration going on. Awards for the boy who had saved the rebellion - who took the plans she had fought for, the plans her crew had died for - and blew up the Death Star.

This is her legacy in a way.

This is all she had left to wait for, to see that her father’s actions had not been in vain.

Kes sees her on her way out. 

A frown tugging slightly at his lips, but he does not say anything to her. 

A fitting farewell for the woman that shouldn’t even be alive. 

 

She moves through space like a ghost. 

No longer a rebel. 

No longer a fugitive.

No one would look at her face and think of  _ Jyn Erso  _ anymore. 

She picks up a new name, a new identity, before moving again. Never staying in the same place for too long, never letting herself get attached to any of the planets she passes through. 

 

There is a part of her that will always fight.

That will protect those weaker than her without second thought.

Because she remembers what it is like to be that way. To be left alone in the world with nothing and no one, but to now that there’s still fight inside of her. 

A child lonely in a spaceport standing up to the barrage of storm troopers.

She sees herself in that young girl. 

And she moves without thinking.

Maybe this was what she has survived for, not to save the rebellion, to the be the hero whose name they would talk about for years to come, who gave hope to whole galaxy. 

But to save this girl. 

To step up and take the blaster shot for her. 

To die properly this time. 

 

She doesn’t die.

The Force it seems has plans for her yet. 

Inevitably. 

 

“Don’t call it a miracle,” is all she tells them, before falling back into a fitful sleep.

 

He, of course, does not listen to her words.

He leans across her  bedside pushing her hair back from her face, fingers brushing against the scars that she could not hide even if she tried.

He breathes her air like it is second nature to him.

He is the one that calls her a miracle. 

But when she opens her eyes, blinking past the blinding lights of a place that is distinctly not a medbay, and sees his face above her, a face she had almost forgotten the fine features of. 

She feels like a miracle. 

  
  
  
  



End file.
